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CommuteCon 2020

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Keynote: The Great Transport Transition

Timothy Papandreou
Founder
Emerging Transport Advisors

Session Description

The great SEA (shared, electric, automated) change is coming to the transport system. We are at the beginning phases of the sunsetting of our traditional transport system and the dawning of the new active, shared, electric and automated transition. This transition will Impact every part of our daily lives especially commuting. Timothy will provide his unique insights drawing from his private, public and community experience to highlight the trends and the policy and technology focus areas that will ensure safer, more equitable, and more sustainable outcomes than we have today.

Timothy Papandreou has accrued nearly 20 years’ experience in transportation management, working in both the public and private sectors. He is the founder and principal of Emerging Transport Advisors, a consulting firm that specializes in providing companies, governments, and nonprofit groups with guidance on how to position themselves for the impending transportation revolution. Tim’s view is that a new age of electrified, automated transportation is on the horizon, and that it will fundamentally and forever change the way we get around.

In his talk, Tim focused on one of the defining features of the current age: urbanization. As Tim notes, current projections indicate that 75% of the global population will live in cities by the year 2050. This means that the world’s urban areas will grow by about three billion people between now and the middle of the century.

Transportation is currently going through a major transition as the ongoing trend toward urbanization continues to gain momentum. The definitive feature of this trend is that people are switching to shared, multimodal solutions rather than relying on single systems and legacy solutions with narrow functional ranges.

As a result, TDM platforms are becoming an increasingly high-profile feature of the urban mobility landscape. These platforms bridge providers and customers, packaging solutions while generating and accumulating data that provides a valuable window into commuter behavior. Known as “mobility as a service” (or MaaS), these platforms are maturing right now and are expected to explode into a $10 trillion global industry by 2035.

Traditional vehicle ownership models will fall out of favor as people elect to pay-per-ride or rent transportation solutions on an as-needed basis. However, rapid progress is rubbing up against what Tim calls “hidden subsidies,” or existing policies that incentive the continued use of privately owned vehicles and other standard, less efficient solutions. Innovation in the form of electrification and automated vehicles will force change on this front in the near-to-mid-term future.

Tim is optimistic. He believes that business and government leaders are awakening to a shift in mindset that will lead to a mass rethinking of these “hidden subsidy” policies and create enormous, highly impactful change. Data will offer huge opportunities to draw important insights, while public-private partnership models will become a new norm. Governments will also increasingly invest in infrastructure and technologies that support the new model, helping usher in a cleaner, more accessible, more efficient, and more equitable mobility future.

Tim’s complete presentation was filled with deep insights and eye-opening predictions of great value to TDM professionals interested in the future of the industry. It was a worthy way to conclude our largest and most successful CommuteCon ever, so please be sure not to miss it!

About the speaker

Timothy is the founder of Emerging Transport Advisors providing strategy to companies, investors, startups and governments on the shared, electric and automated transition. He held positions including strategic partnerships at Google X/Waymo helping launch the world’s first self-driving services, San Francisco’s transportation agency’s Chief Innovation Officer leading the USDOT Smart City Challenge, Vision Zero and their Climate, Multimodal and Strategic Plans. His unique private, public and community experience allows him to see the signals and trends, join the dots and develop unique global insights drawing from his strong track record to lead teams, build win-win partnerships and deliver innovation.

Follow Tim on Twitter @tpap_